After our lengthy hiatus, we are long overdue for some Victorian hotties. I know I owe you all, like, 125 weeks worth of hotties, so this week I bring you not one, not two, but…well, several. Behold, the professorial staff (or some subset thereof) at Tuskegee Institute, circa 1902. I found this while reading about George Washington Carver on Wikipedia earlier today. He’s front row, center.

Yeah, I’m into most of the front row. Far left and far right, I request your private tutelage. Front row, second from left, I will be at your office hours every day. I kind of can’t stop staring at Mr. Far Right. The cheekbones! That smirk! This is me in his class.

Can anyone identify any of the other men in this picture besides Carver? Wikipedia didn’t have any links or references for anyone else in the photo. I need names!

I knew that one day, something would come along that would inspire me to such a degree that I would feel compelled to resurrect this blog, if only for the day. That thing, that great font of inspiration has come. I have seen it, and it is beautiful.

The Ruf is on fire.

Oh, my dear Lord M. The ITV series “Victoria” is airing now in the US on PBS. I missed the first two episodes on TV but caught up on Roku over the weekend before episode three last night. I can’t say I have been totally amazed by Victoria so far. It has been good but not great for me. By far the best part of the show is Rufus Sewell as Lord Melbourne. Holy heck, Rufus Sewell. This man is aging like fine wineclassic literature a vampire. I wish the show spent half the time on Rufus’s face that it spends on Jenna’s. I mean, I get it, she has a beautiful, symmetric face. I don’t need 30 minutes of close-ups.

I was a bit disappointed that by episode 3, we’re already watching Lord M retreat into the shadows while Albert takes his place in Victoria’s heart. I am not a fan of this portrayal of Albert. On a scale of 1 to Twilight, how emo is this guy? Who wants angsty, dour, judgy, and floppy-haired after maybe age 15? He reminds me of the new kid that showed up at my middle-school in 7th grade. All the girls thought he was so DEEP because he was “serious” and had “thoughts” and “read books” (Oliver Twist?). But within weeks, he was dating a beautiful, ditzy girl, and all the smart, normal-looking girls groaned inwardly. But perhaps I digress? Memories…

I can’t get over the Captain Von Trapp green jacket he wears in this scene. How do you solve a problem like…unresolved sexual tension? I’d like to climb every Melbourne. Rufus Sewell is definitely one of my favorite things. I’ll stop now.

Back to Melbourne! My curiosity was piqued by the off-hand comment from Victoria about Melbourne’s wife running off with Lord Byron. I’d never heard that story, so off I went to my Victorian Encyclopedia for some research. Lady Caroline Lamb carried on a very indiscreet love affair with Lord Byron after meeting him at a ball, and devoted William defended and supported her for years, even after she was repeatedly spurned by Lord Byron, and after Caroline and William’s legal separation. According to Wikipedia, Caroline was so crazy about Bryon that she attempted to cut her wrists with a broken wine glass in the middle of a ball because Byron publically insulted her. No one needs that level of drama in their lives, M. I feel for you.

I don’t know ya’ll, I know Byron is some kind of hotness archetype, but Mel is dishy for an old dude, and Byron seems like a jerk.

I am not sure how long I will keep up with Victoria once Sewell bows out. I am just not that interested in the downstairs storyline, and there isn’t enough political or other court intrigue going on to create a larger story beyond Victoria and her romances. We’ll see how the rest of the season shapes up.

Also, please listen to this interview with Rufus discussing the show and his character. He’s utterly charming.

I spent quite some time combing my new Encyclopedia of the Victorian Era looking for some hotties, but the search was disappointingly futile. While there are many profiles of prominent male Victorians in the Encyclopedia, most of the portraits are from late in their lives and none really qualified as hotties by our usual standards. So I turned to the old reliable History Crushes Tumblr blog for a little inspiration, and as usual, it delivered. Enter US President Franklin Pierce.

Pierce was one of the middle-history presidents that nobody remembers much about. Somehow in AP US History in 11th grade, I managed to miss the fact that he was pretty handsome. Not sure how that could have happened. Pierce was our 14th President, in office from 1853-1857. Another thing I didn’t remember from APUSH was that he wasn’t such a great Prez. Wikipedia says he’s considered one of the worst because he exacerbated regional tensions and failed to prevent the Civil War. Seems kind of harsh to blame all that on one dude – that mess started way before Pierce came into office – but everyone knows Wikipedia never lies, so there it is. But…he is hot. And apparently, he was also very charming and had a deep voice.

Pierce was in the Senate the same time as one of my old faves from APUSH, John C. Calhoun. For some reason, we always said his name as John C. Calhooooooon. I can’t resist adding a few pics of Mr. Calhoun – not because he’s a hottie, but because he looks crazy. The hair! It’s too good.

Calling all Willem Dafoe fans – I’ve got a hottie for you! Well, he’s a hottie for everyone, really. This is Wilfrid Scawen Blunt. He was an English poet, writer, and horse-breeder (HEATHER!) who lived from 1840-1922. He was an anti-Imperialist who spent a lot of time in Egypt, the Middle East, and India. He married Lord Byron’s granddaughter, Lady Anne Noel, but had numerous affairs, notably with Catherine “Skittles” Walter, a famous Victorian courtesan (she’s worth a post herself, btw – I’ll get on that next). Wilfrid and Lady Anne brought the first Arabian horses to England, starting a horse farm called Crabbet Arabian Stud. I think it’s clear that the horses weren’t the only studs at Crabbet Farm.

Alright ladies, put your tongues back in your mouths. This handsome gentleman with the great hair is William Hope Hodgson, 1877-1918. He was an English sci-fi, horror, and fantasy writer who started his career as a sailor, wrote some in the middle, and ended as a soldier, killed at the age of 40 in WWI.

Hey baby, can you read this manuscript I wrote while I go pump some iron?

Apparently, Mr. Hodgson was pretty short – 5’6″ to be exact – and this got him bullied and beat up quite a bit throughout his youth. As a result, Hodgson took matters into his own hands and started pumping up. In fact, he opened a gym and physical training center back in England, and starting writing about “physical culture” and the importance of strength training. That turned out to be not-so-popular for some reason (they didn’t have any Oldies to sweat to yet), so he switched to fiction and started writing fantasy and horror stories. A little strange? Yeah, maybe, but also kind of fascinating! He reminds me a lot of my absolute favorite hottie author of all time, Jack London. Let’s listen to Mr. Hodgson discuss his considerable strength in his own words.

“From your remark, I gather that the gods have given you a length of seventy two inches, while they have given this child something under sixty six. With such length I refused to be content, so make it up in breadth and muscularity.

<Katherine’s aside: When I first read this line about his “length,” I have to say, I was not thinking about height.>

“Sometime, if you would really care to have one, I must send you a decent photograph of myself, showing developement. In the meanwhile I have snipped you out a couple of weeny ones from some old postcards of mine. They may interest you.

“Of course, I’m nothing like as strong as I used to be before the flue bowled me over last year, and left my heart a wee bitte weak. Also, I think that writing has taken off a lot of muscle — confound it! But I suppose one musn’t be greedy.

“Before I was ill, I could take two fifty-six pound weights in one hand, and put them at arm’s length over my head, and, in fact, lift a good deal more than that with more convenient weights.

<Katherine’s aside: !!!!>

Now, I very much doubt if I could lift more than eighty or ninety pounds over my head with one hand. Another thing, I could lift considerably more than a quarter of a ton off the ground, using my bare hands — no straps around hand and wrist. And that takes a bit of doing. And now — well, if I go easy I daresay I shall come back to my old form in time — let but the editors smile on me a bit.

Happy New Year! This year, the Vicky A’s resolve to waste more time thinking about attractive men who have been dead for over a century. To that end, let’s start the year off right with a Victorian Hottie of the Week. For our first hottie of the year, we choose the Right Adorable Michael Faraday. Familiar to you from your high school physics class, Mr. Faraday made a number of crucial discoveries in the field of electromagnetism. He is certainly one of the most influential scientists of the Victorian era, and his work influenced another of our hotties, James Clerk Maxwell. In fact, his genius and hotness were so highly regarded that Albert Einstein kept a picture of Faraday on his wall. If I were Einstein, I’d stare at Faraday all day long while trying to figure out if I could fly backwards around the Earth fast enough to go back in time and take him home to our own personal Faraday love cage, which would, of course, isolate us from all cell phone related interruptions.

Oh, Horatio! We all know Lord Nelson was a majorly kick-ass Naval commander — one of the most revered in English history. Nelson’s tactical skill and bravery won him many battles at sea, including the well-known Battle of Trafalgar where the combined French and Spanish fleet lost 22 of their 33 ships, and the British lost none of their 27. But did you know what a stone cold fox he was?

Later in his career, he had a very public affair with a woman who was recognized as the most beautiful woman in England, Emma, Lady Hamilton. An iconic face in contemporary painting, Emma was passed around by various British elite before meeting and falling in love with Nelson. Nelson was married and had been for years, but after meeting Emma, he fell in love with her as well. Problem was, she was already married to another old white dude, Sir William Hamilton, British envoy to Naples.

Emma, by George Romney, 1785

So Nelson loved Emma and Emma loved Nelson, and basically, Sir William was cool with this. He was so cool, in fact, that the three of them lived together openly in a righteous 18th century menage a trois while Nelson and Emma waited for Sir William to die so they could marry. He finally kicked it in 1803, but right about the same time Nelson was recalled to sea, and in 1805, he was killed at Trafalgar. Can someone please make a movie of this? Because I would definitely pay $13 to see it in 3D.

Oh yeah, and after his death, Lord Nelson became an immortal deity, as shown in this photograph. He was the man.

We know Yeats was a passionate man – see Heather’s lovely post on one of his love affairs here and one of his beautiful poems here. We’ve also already established that I’m a sucker for a good pince nez. Put these things together, and Yeats makes an excellent Victorian hottie of the week.

Yeats always closely associated love affairs with creativity and inspiration. Throughout his life, he had many affairs, even after marrying the young Georgie Hyde Lees when he was 51 and she 25.

Even in his old age, Yeats still got around. He underwent a surgery called the “Steinach procedure” at 69 and possibly as a result, experienced what he called “a second puberty.” The operation was a half vasectomy which the inventor, Eugen Steinach, claimed would increase hormone production and male sexual potency. Whether or not it actually worked as advertised, Yeats experienced a rejuventating effect that led to a period of prolific writing. It also led to affairs with significantly younger women including a 27 year-old named Margot Ruddock. Boston College magazine has a great account of Yeats’s later life including an excerpt from a letter he wrote to Margot suggesting she squint when she looks at his aging body.

O how can I that interest hold?
What offer to attentive eyes?
Mind grows young and body old;
When half closed her eye-lid lies
A sort of hidden glory shall
About these stooping shoulders fall.

I don’t know, I think he’s a pretty good looking old dude. What do you think?

Old Thomas Edison has been getting a bit of a bad rap recently. There seems to be a rivalry between Tesla and Edison fans these days, but we don’t really care because they were both megawatt-hotties. There’s nothing better than a babe with brains, am I right ladies? Most of the famous photos of Edison show him later in life, but this one shows what a handsome young man he was, scowling expression and all. There’s no smiling in science, people! Unless you’re Nikola Tesla, of course.

I’ll leave the lights on for you, Thomas. And if you’re busy, can you send over Nikola? Heck, why don’t you both come and show me who is the best at generating electricity?